Big Data Career Notes: June 2023 Edition

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In this monthly feature, we’ll keep you up-to-date on the latest career developments for individuals in the big data community. Whether it’s a promotion, new company hire, or even an accolade, we’ve got the details. Check in each month for an updated list and you may even come across someone you know, or better yet, yourself!

John Breitenfeld

Percona, a provider of enterprise-grade open source database software and services, appointed John Breitenfeld as its new chief revenue officer. Breitenfeld joins Percona from Panaseer, where he served as vice president of global sales. Prior to Panaseer, Breitenfeld spent over four years as the executive vice president of global sales at Percona.

“We’re thrilled to welcome John Breitenfeld back to the leadership team at Percona,” said Ann Schlemmer, CEO at Percona. “John possesses a vast wealth of experience and knows what it takes to grow sustainably in this market. We are confident that, with John as our new CRO, Percona will continue to grow and maintain its position as the undisputed leader in open source database software and services.”

Steve Burke

Snowflake, the data cloud company, appointed Steve Burke to its board of directors. Burke most recently served as chief executive officer of NBCUniversal. He currently serves on the boards of directors of J.P. Morgan Chase and Berkshire Hathaway.

“Snowflake has established itself as a transformative force for businesses across industries and around the world,” said Burke. “I am honored to join the Snowflake Board of Directors and look forward to leveraging my experience and insights to help guide the company as it continues to innovate and deliver for its customers.”

Will Davis

CData Software, a provider of data connectivity and integration solutions, appointed Will Davis to the role of chief marketing officer. Davis will be responsible for leading the CData marketing team, focusing on accelerating the company’s business growth by driving its go-to-market strategy, demand generation, and brand awareness.

“CData has built an incredible business that powers the connectivity of so many household names across technology, financial services, and healthcare,” said Davis. “The company is unrivaled when it comes to the breadth and depth of its connectivity solutions and the value it generates for customers, all while growing extremely fast and maintaining profitability. I was immediately drawn to CData’s potential to disrupt the data integration market with a unique portfolio of connectivity solutions, and I look forward to spearheading the company’s advancement alongside an exceptional marketing team.”

Fab Dolan

Appen Limited, a solution provider of data services for deep learning and generative artificial intelligence systems, appointed Fab Dolan as its chief marketing officer. Dolan joins Appen with over 15 years of experience building brands such as Android, Google, YouTube, and Cheerios.

“We’re at a moment of incredible transformation that will impact every aspect of society, and I can think of no more exciting place to be than Appen, a company that has been consistently powering this technological revolution for decades – a company ready for the moment,” Dolan said.

Ryan Dolley

GoodData, a data and analytics company, appointed Ryan Dolley as its vice president of product strategy. Dolley is a co-host of Super Data Brothers, an analytics and business intelligence-focused podcast. He is also a founding board member of the AI and Data Analytics User Group, a global user community for IBM technology users, and a five-time IBM Champion.

“I am thrilled to be joining GoodData and working with such a talented team,” Dolley said. “The analytics industry is changing in favor of governance, balanced self-service, and headless metrics supported by standard software engineering practices. That’s exactly what GoodData delivers, and why I’m so excited about our future.”

Kacy Hassack

Veeam Software appointed Kacy Hassack as its chief people and culture officer. Hassack career in human resources spans over two decades. Prior to joining Veeam, Hassack held leadership roles at organizations, including Indeed, Amazon Web Services, Hewlett Packard, and Dell.

“Great businesses start with great people,” said Hassack. “Veeam has become #1 in data protection and ransomware recovery by delivering incredible customer-focused innovation. People are at the center of the company’s success, and the Veeam culture reflects that. I am so excited to join Veeam and collaborate with teams across the company to develop strategies that emphasize the value of our employees and new approaches to enable our people to do their best work.”

Joe Kim

Sumo Logic appointed Joe Kim as its president and chief executive officer. Kim brings more than two decades of operating executive experience in the application, infrastructure, and security industries. Most recently, Kim served as a Senior operating partner for Francisco Partners.

“I have long been impressed by Sumo Logic’s ability to deliver powerful insights to customer’s cloud infrastructures through its observability and security solutions,” Kim said. “We intend to build on this strong foundation and deliver the leading SaaS analytics platform for reliable and secure cloud-native applications. I am excited to hit the ground running and to work alongside the Sumo Logic team to accelerate growth, innovate on our leading technology and empower our customers.”

Sun Lee

BigPanda, Inc. appointed Sun Lee as its chief marketing officer. Lee was most recently chief marketing officer at the decision intelligence company Sisu Data. Before Sisu, she was vice president of global campaign, partner, and digital marketing at Pure Storage.

“Joining a company that helps solve an existing and widespread pain in the marketplace was particularly attractive to me, as was the fact that the market has plenty of opportunities for future growth,” Lee said. “The other main reason I joined was the people — decision-making can be difficult for startups and growth-stage businesses because of the number of changes they experience, so it’s important to learn how to execute as a team. In that vein, BigPanda’s clear desire to iterate together as a team was very refreshing.”

Megan Maslanka

Starburst, the data lake analytics platform, appointed Megan Maslanka as its chief people officer. Maslanka joined Starburst from Five9, where she held the role of vice president of people. Before Starburst, she was head of talent operations at DocuSign.

“We are building a sustainable organization that is very focused on building growth the right way,” Maslanka said in a blog announcement. “The challenge to do it the right way is really appealing to me. Justin and the exec team have such strong values that are rare to find; I thought it was really important to be partnered with an executive team and CEO that knew what it took and had a value system that was different from a lot of startups.

Sylvan Morley

Sinch AB  appointed Sylvan Morley as its chief data and transformation officer. Morley joins Sinch from  Lumen Technology, where he held the role of senior vice president and chief data officer. Morley has broad industrial experience from senior roles at companies across technology, manufacturing, healthcare, and aviation.

“I’m very pleased to welcome Sibito to Sinch as we step up the pace of integration to ensure customers reap the full benefits of our broadened product offering,”  said Laurinda Pang, Sinch CEO. “His deep experience in business transformation will help unlock both revenue and cost synergies whilst ensuring we leverage our data to deliver outstanding customer experiences.”

Paul O’Brien and Tom Siegel 

MariaDB plc appointed Paul O’Brien as the company’s chief executive officer and will serve as a member of the board of directors. O’Brien has served as senior vice president of sales and field operations of the company since March 2023. Prior to joining MariaDB, he served as vice president of operations at NetApp, Inc.

In addition, MariaDB appointed Tom Siegel as chief revenue officer to lead the sales, consulting, support, and training teams. He was most recently CRO at Bringg, a SaaS delivery management platform. Prior to that, he was chief sales officer at Fuze, a cloud communications software company, and vice president of worldwide sales operations at PTC.

Jason Smith

Precisely appointed Jason Smith as its chief financial officer. Smith most recently served as the CFO of Citrix, and previously held financial leadership roles at ADT and the Alamo and National car rental companies.

“It’s an incredible opportunity to serve as the CFO of Precisely. I’m impressed by the company’s history, consistent growth, and strength of the business and culture,” said Smith. “I’m excited to work with the Precisely team to build upon the company’s exceptional track record for financial discipline and business agility to fuel continued innovation and leadership in the data integrity market.”

Rachel Thornton

Fivetran appointed Rachel Thornton as the company’s chief marketing officer. Thornton brings more than 25 years of B2B tech experience, having served in marketing and leadership roles at Amazon/AWS, Salesforce, Cisco Systems, and Microsoft.

“I am proud to join a company that provides enterprises such tremendous ROI and is focused on a critical business need: automating the flow of data,” said Thornton. “I’m looking forward to working with the talented Fivetran team as we focus on accelerating customer growth worldwide and solidifying Fivetran as the standard for data movement.”

ADIA Lab Senior Fellows

ADIA Lab, an independent research institute dedicated to basic and applied research in data and computational sciences, appointed four international scientists as ADIA Lab Senior Fellows. The Senior Fellows will each conduct a research project and publish a final paper related to specific topics identified by ADIA Lab.

“Each of our inaugural group of Senior Fellows are exceptional scientists and widely recognized as experts in their fields,” Dr. Horst Simon, Director of ADIA Lab, said. “One of our key objectives at ADIA Lab is to support the development of cutting-edge research into topics with broad and global impact. We eagerly anticipate the findings of our Senior Fellows’ research projects, as we are confident they will make important contributions to data and computational sciences.”

To read last month’s edition of Career Notes, click here.

Do you know someone that should be included in next month’s list? If so, send us an email at [email protected]. We look forward to hearing from you.